I just scanned through some of the posts I’ve written over the past 18 months or so since we found out Jess was pregnant. It feels like a lifetime ago. I stopped writing for a while when things got really rough (that’s a story for another post), and then I started again, and then I started writing about other things. But today I want to write about 5 things I’ve learned about parenting during this first year. Which, based on #1, you might want to ignore completely. But let’s do it anyway.

1. There is no right answer

I’ve learned that the Internet is the worst possible place to go for parenting advice. And within that vast expanse of bad advice, Facebook stands apart in its ability to make you feel like a complete failure as a parent.

Every parent has an opinion on sleep training, what to do with runny noses, how important vaccinations are, whether TV makes your child smart or dumb, how safe humidifiers are, what food you should give your baby… the list is endless. And the problem with Facebook is, you know these people. They are your friends. So you’re supposed to trust them, right? And if you hear advice that is different from someone else’s advice, as you inevitably will, you feel like someone’s going to judge you for what you do, because these people are your friends.

The reality is this. Every child is different. Every parent is different. But it goes beyond that — every child/parent combination is different. This means that there are endless permutations of child/parent relationships, and each combination requires something completely unique: your instinct. No one knows what is best — least of all you as the parent. But you know what feels right. And that is what you have to trust.

Sure, there are some questions that are innocent enough, like what the best nappy is for sleeping in. But for the most part, if I ever give you parenting advice, please ignore it and just follow your instincts.

2. Your life does not belong to you any more

Speaking of advice, the worst piece of advice I ever heard goes something like this:

Don’t let the baby set the agenda for your household. They are joining your family, not the other way around. They can fit into your schedule.

Simply. Not. True. The needs of the baby come first, and that means that your needs are a very distant second. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, just that if you expect to go on as if nothing happened, you’re in for a big surprise.

Say what you will about the movie Marley & Me, but I think it is one of the most realistic movies about parenting ever made. This quote sums up my point perfectly:

I just got overwhelmed. No one tells you how hard this is all gonna be.

Which part?

All of it: Marriage, being a parent. It’s the hardest job in the world and nobody prepares you for that. Nobody tells you how much you have to give up. I feel like they do tell you, but you don’t listen… or you think, ‘Ah, they’re just miserable.’ I’ve given up so much of what made me who I am. But I can’t say that because… I’m a very bad person if I say that. But I feel it. I really do. I feel it sometimes. I just want you to know that.

I do know that. And you can say it. I say it.

But I did make a choice. I made a choice, and even if it’s harder than I thought… I don’t regret it. ‘Cause it kinda has like a… ‘there’s no place like home’ feeling to it. I just think these things are gonna happen and we’re gonna get through them. And we’ll just do it together.

Realistic expectations are extremely important. You are giving up your life for something amazing and magical, but don’t be under the illusion that things won’t change — they will.

3. I don’t know anything

When I started writing about parenting, I had this grandiose dream of becoming the male version of Heather Armstrong, blogging my way through things and inspiring people along the way. I don’t have this dream any more, because nothing has humbled me so much about my own abilities like parenting has.

I can now change a nappy, get my daughter dressed in the morning, get her from point A to B using various forms of transport, including but not limited to our car and a hot pink tricycle. I can read her stories and encourage her enthusiastically when she takes a few steps. I can teach her about Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis, and hopefully one day about Coldplay and Bon Iver and The Album Leaf. I can play guitar for her, give her kisses, and tell her I love her. I can now even put her to bed without much of a hassle.

But I still feel like I don’t know anything. And I have a suspicion that I will always feel like that. It is not necessarily a bad thing though, because it keeps me on my toes. It makes me think about how I interact with her, how my actions will influence hers, how everything I do can teach her in some small way to be honest, honorable, and passionate about everything she does. I don’t know anything, but I’m ok with that. Because I think like most of us, I can use a daily dose of humility.

4. We’re all in it together

As bad as Facebook is for parenting advice, it is a fantastic place for community. If we’re friends on Facebook and you have kids, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. From the “Hello again, 3am” status updates to the “Hooray, the diarrhea stopped” ones, as soon as you say a word about parenting, we know what you mean. And nothing encourages you like knowing you are not alone.

The parenting tribe has sustained us through many difficult nights and days, so to you I say: thank you. And keep posting.

5. Ask for help

I have long since given up my shyness about asking people for help. Even if their offers seem insincere at the time – it’s their fault, right?

“Hey, let me know if you ever need a babysitter to come and…”

“Can you come Friday night?”

This parenting thing is not meant to be done alone, so don’t even try. Ask for people to help with lifts, food, babysitting, cleaning, laundry, old toys, old clothes, new nappies, whatever. People want to help, and we need to give them the opportunity to do so.

The toughest job…

Over the course of the past year or so, three things that people said to me about parenting has stuck with me:

• Having a baby is not a hostile takeover, it’s a friendly takeover.
• Being a parent is the toughest job you will ever love.
• Being a parent is wonderful, but parenting isn’t always that.

There is a little bit of truth in all those statements. But when my daughter runs into my arms, and I think about the past year and all the ups and downs, the one I keep coming back to is this. It’s a tough job. But I love it.

The Wikipedia definition of the high five is pretty dry, but it’s a good place to start:

The high five is a celebratory hand gesture that occurs when two people simultaneously raise one hand, about head high, and push, slide or slap the flat of their palm and hand against the palm and flat hand of their partner

You wouldn’t think that such a thing would be open to controversy, but apparently the origin of the high five is a bit of hotly contested history.  The most credible story is that it started in US baseball in the 70s, but of course there’s some basketball player who says he executed the first high five in the 60s.

But I guess the origin or meaning is not that important.  What is important is, why was this couple high five-ing?  What did he say to her to elicit that response?  As a new dad myself, I feel like it had to be something about the baby.  Probably something like “Look, she just fell asleep!” or “Did you see her poop isn’t yellow any more?”

What’s also important is why this struck me as so odd.  It shouldn’t. Walking through a mall should expose us to one giant high five circus.

Maybe I find it odd because when we’re knee deep in parenting, we tend to not have the time or the inclination to look up long enough to see the high five-able moments.  Maybe it’s because, as I wrote earlier, we forget that life is staggering.  Or  maybe it’s because we lower the bar too much to save us from disappointment — or as Frank Chimero put it (much more eloquently than I ever could):

When does the magic of a situation fade? When do we get acclimated to the exceptional? Is this how we get by? Would anything get done if we were constantly gobsmacked? Is this how we survive, how we stay sane? We define a pattern, no matter how exceptional, and acclimate ourselves to it?

I guess what I’m trying to say is, we need to high five each other more.  Couples, especially, need to find those moments of celebration.  Because things can get pretty bleak if you don’t raise your hands every once in a while.  So, here you go, a gift from me to you:

^5.

You’re welcome.

When we first started planning the move, we agreed on one thing: it’s going to be difficult as hell, but it is a story we have to live. What I kept saying to Jess was this: The next year is not going to be easy. It’s too much change, and too much uncertainty, too quickly. But we needed to remember that a year down the road it was going to be September in Cape Town. It would be Spring, and we’d wake up to a sunrise over Table Mountain, and we’d suddenly be ok.

Last night our almost-1-year-old slept through the night, something she’s done maybe 10 nights since she was born. This morning I went for a run on the Sea Point Promenade and witnessed that sunrise over Table Mountain. I had a perfect cappuccino at Origin.  And then I got an SMS from my wife to say that our daughter cut her 7th tooth. Also, someone I respect unfollowed me on Twitter, but you know, in the bigger scheme of things that’s probably ok.  So yes, I’d say that we’re home now, and that everything is going to be all right.

I have written before about how instrumental Donald Miller was to us during our moving process, and today I was reminded again of this quote from A Thousand Miles to a Thousand Years:

We get robbed of the glory of life because we aren’t capable of remembering how we got here. When you are born, you wake slowly to everything. Your brain doesn’t stop growing until you turn twenty-six, so from birth to twenty-six, God is slowly turning the lights on, and you’re groggy and pointing at things saying circle! and blue! and car! and then sex! and job! and health care!

The experience is so slow you could easily come to believe life isn’t that big of a deal, that life isn’t staggering. What I’m saying is I think life is staggering and we’re just used to it. We all are like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we’re given — it’s just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving in over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral.

So, hey. Let’s allow ourselves to be awed every once in a while, ok?

Now, I had never read this book, so I was as enthralled as she was right from the start.  I mean, this is solid story-telling.  Clocking in at only 225 words, the book manages to introduce its main character, help you identify with him, take him through an enormous crisis, and resolve it beautifully into a happy ending.  I don’t want to spoil the ending, but let’s just say our hero has quite the journey in the space of one week.

I think my daughter liked the pictures and forget about it as soon as we were done, but the story stuck with me for a long time.  As I was lying awake thinking about it, several questions started to materialize in my mind, and I might go crazy unless I get them out.  So here goes — Part 1 of what will hopefully be an ongoing series about children’s books.  First, let’s look at the storyline.

The logic and science of The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Ok, so we have a caterpillar as our main character, and he is hungry.  Nothing wrong with that.  The book doesn’t tell us what he’s been eating up to that point, but we know that caterpillars are mostly phytophagous in food habit — meaning they’re herbivores and therefore eat plants.  So his diet over the first few days of the story raises some warning flags that, frankly, his friends should have picked up on.  Apples, pears, plums, strawberries — all good, and certainly a healthy diet, but those are fruit, not plants.  This dude’s got some serious issues.

But then things get nasty.  On Friday he eats five whole oranges?  Hold up there, fellow.  Have you seen how small you are?  At their biggest, caterpillars can get up to three inches long.  You stuff five oranges into such a small body and things are going to get weird pretty quickly. I guess it’s possible though, considering that caterpillars have been called “eating machines”, and eat pretty much all the time.  According to Wikipedia:

Most species shed their skin four or five times as their bodies grow, and they eventually pupate into an adult form.  Caterpillars grow very quickly – for example, a tobacco hornworm will increase its weight ten-thousand-fold in less than twenty days. An adaptation that enables them to eat so much is a mechanism in a specialized midgut that quickly transports ions to the lumen (midgut cavity), to keep the potassium level higher in the midgut cavity than in the blood.

So let’s say our friend survives the ordeal of the five oranges.  On Saturday, however, everything falls apart in the little guy’s world.  He eats chocolate cake, ice cream, a pickle, swiss cheese, salami, a lollipop, a cherry pie, a single sausage, a cupcake and a whole slice of watermelon.  Yes, some species of caterpillar have been known to be predators and even show cannibalistic tendencies, but this is just ridiculous.  There’s no way he could survive this binge.  Something must have set him off — but I guess that is the mystery of the story?

Whatever intervention happened between Saturday and Sunday, it must have worked.  Our friend the caterpillar goes on a serious diet and eats one single leaf — which is what he should have done in the first place — and this cures him of the gigantic stomachache he must have had from the previous week.  It is highly unlikely that (1) a single leaf could cure the caterpillar of his problems, and (2) that he would only eat one leaf that day.  I don’t think they lack the mental fortitude to stop eating.

But, let’s leave it at that.  Eventually the caterpillar turns into a butterfly, and the story has a happy ending.  Despite its science being very confusing, I must say that as a science fiction novel, this story really connected with me in the end when everything finally worked out.  So what can we learn from The Very Hungry Caterpillar?

The moral of the story is…

I think this story teaches us several life lessons:

• Don’t try to be someone you’re not.  The caterpillar clearly wasn’t happy with who he was — a herbivore.  He had to go out and experiment with all kinds of different foods, and in the end it nearly killed him.  He should have just been himself.
• You need friends who care about you.  Where was the caterpillar’s friends?  Was no one there to hold him accountable when he went off the deep end?  He needed a mentor, someone to share his troubles with.
• Overindulging is never an answer.  This story doesn’t have a lot of words in it, but it goes out of its way to explain that the caterpillar had a very bad stomachache after he snapped.  This is a universal truth — if you try to drown your sorrows by overindulging in things that help you escape reality, your tummy will most certainly ache the next morning, and your troubles will still be there.
• When things go wrong, return to what you know.  After hitting rock bottom on Saturday night, the caterpillar woke up on Sunday and realized that he needs to stop running away from himself.  He went back to his roots, ate a leaf, and became a butterfly.  That’s something all of us should remember when times are tough.  Take comfort in what you know, and have hope that maybe one day we’ll all transform into butterflies.

So even though I think we can learn a lot from this story, the science still bothers me.  I’d appreciate it if any of you can shed some light on what affliction might have befallen our caterpillar.

This post is part of the Fatherhood Friday series on Dad-Blogs.  Head over there to read some of the other Fatherhood Friday posts!

I remember the first time I left South Africa.  I was in my early twenties, and I got on a plane to Australia to study there for two years.  I had no idea what I was doing or how it would feel to be in another country.  I also had no idea what jet lag was all about.  The first night I went to bed at 4pm.  Big mistake.  I woke up at 2am, wide awake and hungrier than I’ve ever been in my entire life.  I got up to go hunting for food, and the KFC burger I found most likely saved my life that night.

I think of that experience often when I see Aralyn experiencing new things, because the look in her eyes reminds me of how I felt that night.  The realization that the world is so much bigger than you ever imagined can be as frightening as it is exhilarating.  And for Aralyn, every day is like a flight to a new country.  From the smallest discovery that she is able to move her toes, to the overwhelming experience of being in an airport with all its noises and people, “overstimulation” in babies is no made-up thing you say when the crying doesn’t stop.  It is very, very real.

A few nights ago Jess and I flew down to San Diego to spend Christmas with family.  It was the first time I flew with Aralyn, and I was a total ball of stress for days ahead of the flight.  And for good reason.  Let’s just say that things did not go well, and that I am strongly considering staying in San Diego until she is around 8 years old and able to fly without incident.  She cried inconsolably throughout the flight, and even though there were probably a few sympathetic parents somewhere, I couldn’t find any as I scanned the plane with a facial expression that hopefully conveyed how extremely sorry I was for the inconvenience we were causing them.

But it also got me thinking about the experience of becoming fully human.  I understand why Aralyn was crying.  She was in a completely foreign environment, with loud noises and bright lights, full of people she has never seen before.  Just like I felt when I woke up at 2am that first night in Australia.

But despite these traumatic experiences we eventually get older and learn how to deal with newness and the things that expand our world views.  I do think that anything we do that increases the size of our worlds has some essence of the effect I see it has on Aralyn.  She can’t talk yet, but her eyes scream her emotions: “I don’t know what this is, and it scares me to death, but please give me more of it.”

And so it is that, even at the tender age of 3 months, my daughter is already teaching me about life.  She is teaching me that we should all keep doing things that scare us.  Because those frightening experiences are what allow us to experience life fully and become, truly and happily, human.

I loved Voortrekkers, because it was all about being in the outdoors, learning how to tie knots, how to build a fire and pitch tents, survival skills, that kind of stuff.  Also, there were girls.  But there was one thing that made Voortrekkers very difficult.  Our weekly group meeting was on Fridays from 5:30-7pm.  And 7pm was MacGyver time.

Let met step back a second and tell you about TV in South Africa in the 1980s.  We didn’t get a lot of quality shows from America, or from anywhere for that matter, so we made do with reruns of The Jerry Springer Show, and old seasons of Perfect Strangers and Full House.  But Friday nights at 7pm was something completely different.  Friday night was TV gold in South Africa.  The night where the best action shows out of America were on: Airwolf, The A-Team, Riptide and yes, MacGyver.  MacGyver was a family institution at our house.  So every Friday evening at 7pm I would jump on my bike and ride the 6 and a half minutes home as fast as I possibly could so that I wouldn’t miss too much of an episode.

Anyway, I need to get to the point.  A recent parenting experience brought all my MacGyver memories flooding back.  Aralyn, our 3-month old, was in her 4th hour of inconsolable crying, and we’d tried absolutely everything to calm her down.  As a very last resort, I used a specific combination of math skillz (severe trigonometry to figure out a precise angle), a bottle, a car seat, and a boppy pillow to trick her into calming down and finally falling sleep.  I felt extremely proud of myself, and I immediately thought that my exposure to MacGyver at such an impressionable age was what saved me that night.  Which got me thinking about the many things MacGyver can teach us about parenting.  But before we go into that, a little reminder of the absolutely awesome MacGyver intro is in order:

1. All the tools you need are within reach

Nothing can make you feel as inadequate as a crying baby in your arms.  Sometimes there is just nothing wrong, except that your baby needs to cry for a while.  My advice?  Don’t give up trying different things to soothe her.  Like MavGyver, use the tools that are available to you — swings, pushing a stroller back and forth over a crack in the carpet, rocking the crib, swaddling her tightly, singing, talking, whispering, white noise, no noise, Miles Davis, Coldplay, the news on the radio, a pacifier, touching her nose, and the list goes on and on.  Keep going, keep trying.  The tools are there.  If you work at it long enough, something will work.

2. Never panic under pressure

I still remember our first night after bringing Aralyn home.  I was frantically holding her in one arm, while reading Happiest baby on the block and trying to learn swaddling techniques with my free hand.  I panicked.  And we panicked for many nights to come.  But slowly you start to realize that this episode will probably end like last night’s episode, so instead of panicking, stay calm, and use those tools.  Remember MacGyver’s composure.

3. You’re better than the bad guys

You really are more capable than you think.  I didn’t believe it about myself either, until that first time I managed to soothe Aralyn to sleep.  Then I started, slowly, to believe in myself.  I’m not there yet, but just like MacGyver and his faith in all that is good, I know now that I am able to beat the “bad guys” that make Aralyn cry, if I just keep at it.

4. Every day looks like it might end in disaster, but it all works out in the end

There were so many nights that we thought Aralyn would simply never sleep and we would be doomed to live in a state of wakefulness for all eternity. But somehow, I have no idea how, she fell asleep in the end, and we were able to get a few hours of rest.  Remember that, like every MacGyver episode, the hero always wins in the end.

5. Tomorrow will bring a new problem to solve

But it’s not over.  Tomorrow will bring new bad guys, new challenges, but also new tools.  So keep MacGyver’s optimism with you and know that the writers already wrote all the tools you will need into tomorrow’s episode.  You just have to stay calm, remember that you’re the hero, and beat those bad guys.

The first book we read on the topic was Vaccine Safety Manual for Concerned Families and Health Practitioners: Guide to Immunization Risks and Protection.   A better title might have been “Vaccinate your kids and they will die a horrible death, immediately.”  It really is a frightening read in every sense of the word.  We started reading the book a day before our daughter was scheduled for her first vaccination appointment, and it freaked us out so much that we immediately pushed out the appointment by 2 weeks, and wondered how we would ever be able to sleep without nightmares.

The next morning we took a deep breath, and started reading the other side of the story.  We went through a bunch of sources, but the most balanced book we found on the topic, and the one we ended up using in our decision, is Dr. Sears’ The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child.  The book provides a balanced view of the pros and cons of each vaccination, and instead of prescribing what to do, it gives reasons for why you might want to give, or not give, each vaccination.

We eventually decided to go with Dr. Sears’ schedule that spaces out the vaccinations so that you don’t pump so much aluminum into their little bodies all at once.  So yesterday we dressed our daughter in the cutest outfit we could find, strapped her into the car seat, and went to the hospital.  Yesterday was also Black Friday in the US, and that’s very much what it felt like to us…  However, in the end, our daughter was much stronger than her parents.  I almost resorted to violence when the nurse stuck the needle in her leg, but other than that it was a fairly uneventful hospital visit.

The point I’m trying to make though, is that it really doesn’t matter what we decided to do. Before I had kids, I used to watch parents do certain things and think to myself, “I will never do that with my kids.”  Now I think differently.  Now I understand three undeniable facts about parenthood:

1. Everyone loves their kids
2. In most cases, there is no clear right way and wrong way to do things
3. We all get as informed as we can, and then we make the decision that feels most right

So whether you decide to vaccinate your kids or not, what is important is that you make an informed decision.  Beyond that, no one is allowed to judge you.

Aralyn is healthy, beautiful, sweet, and we love her to death.  She also has colic.  Which means that our lives have become very much like a Vegas casino in many ways.  We never sleep, it is always daytime, and our victories with her are few and far between.  I won’t lie and say that it’s been easy.  I can’t pretend that we are happy campers when it’s 2am and she is in her fourth hour of inconsolable crying.  But I am also amazed at how ridiculously much we love her.

You see, there is nothing wrong with her.  She is strong, she eats well, she grows and poops just like she is supposed to.  It’s just that her personality is, well, I guess you could say “spirited.”  No one knows what causes colic, but there is universal agreement on two things: (1) it peaks around 6 weeks, and (2) it goes away completely by about 3 months.

So this means that we are about to enter the 6-week peak.  It is amazing how our tolerance level for crying has gone up exponentially, and surviving on less than 3 hours sleep per night has just become part of everyday life, even if I still work full days every day up in San Francisco.

As you can probably tell by now, this post is not well-written, filled with funny stories, or edited in any way.  They are just the thoughts of an exhausted brain trying desperately to hang on until this phase passes.  I am frustrated with my inability to “fix” this.  But in the end, all I can do is hold her close to my chest, tell her I love her, and know that even though she doesn’t know what’s going on, she knows that she is safe, and she knows that she is loved.

Below is a photo montage of her first 5 weeks that I just put together this afternoon.  The song in the background is called “A Sign of Things to Come,” by the brilliant Temple Scene.  I chose it first and foremost for the lyrics, which are very fitting, but also because Jess and I listened to this album all the time while she was pregnant, so it will always remind me of that time.  Like the song says:

You can’t hold the night out
But take your stand against the storm
And you will find your way out of here
And when it feels like the rain is seeping in
And when it feels like the walls are no match for the wind
You don’t have to run when you know where you have to go

Aralyn’s First 5 weeks from Rian Van Der Merwe on Vimeo.

Speaking of hospitals, let me begin by saying this.  Although we received excellent care at the Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara hospital, I did question their judgment when they told us we can go home with the baby.  You mean to tell me we’re allowed to take a whole human being home with us, without anyone supervising us?  Highly irresponsible of them, if you ask me.  But I digress.

Speaking of digressing (and I’m allowed to do that since I didn’t sleep last night), here’s another observation.  When you first tell people that you are about to have a baby, their initial reaction is always a wonderfully self-affirming excitement, followed by the universally agreed-upon “when are you due?” question.  (Or, as one friend put it, “When did it happen?” None of your business when it happened, buddy!).

What happens next is also quite predictable.  Those who don’t have kids move on to other subjects and the matter is quickly forgotten.  But those who have kids take a different route.  There are a few seconds of silence, a widening of the pupils, a knowing and mysterious smile, followed by the words, “Your lives are going to change.” These words are usually spoken in a chilling monotone that somehow seems to suck the air out of the room.  I’ve always wondered about that.  There is so much emotion and experience bundled up in the simple words “Your lives are going to change,” that I was too afraid to ask them to elaborate.

Well, now I know what it means.  It means that elation, helplessness, joy, tiredness, ridiculous love, and feelings of inadequacy actually become one giant ball of emotion when you have a child. All these things become so intertwined that you can’t tell them apart, just as you have trouble telling night from day.  And I think this is a good thing.  I think it is good that for the first few weeks/months of a child’s life, you are physically incapable of focusing on anything else in your life.  Because caring for a child is that important, and you should not be allowed to make it just another part of your life.

And so Aralyn, Jess and I survived the first two weeks of her life.  Here’s a brief rundown of what we survived.  These might seem like small accomplishments, but they sure feel big to us:

• We survived the first night of trying everything in our power to soothe her while I speed-read The Happiest Baby on the Block in a desperate attempt to learn the inner workings of swaddling.
• We survived our first two visits to the Kaiser “Newborn Club” where the nurses taught me made-up words such as “hooter hider” and “nipple confusion.”
• We survived our first freak-out session over her erratic breathing and the (what appeared to be a) 10-year old doctor who couldn’t get an accurate oxygen reading, gave up, left the room, and called a nurse to help us instead.
• We survived our first appointment with the pediatrician who I’m pretty sure was in the cast of Fawlty Towers at some point in his life.  At least he could get an accurate oxygen count, though.
• And most of all, we survived the lack of sleep.  Nothing can prepare you for the lack of sleep.

I also feel obligated to answer a question my friend G-J asked me on Twitter today:

@RianVDM Are the nappies [diapers] as terrifying as you anticipated? Is the Diaper Genie II holding up well?

The answer to both of those questions is a resounding YES!  Diapers continue to be extremely terrifying to me, especially the variety of colors and smells that currently make up the poopiness inside.  Right now we’re at the “Dijon Mustard” stage, and sometimes at 3am it’s so eerily similar that I almost want to go toast some bread and… well, you know what I mean.

But the Diaper Genie II is a magnificent piece of equipment.  It’s one of those rare products that actually delivers on its promise of keeping dirty diapers out of sight and smell.  Although we did learn an important lesson last night.  When it’s full, it’s full.  The bags tear easily so don’t keep pushing things down in there, otherwise you will be forced to put on full scuba gear and dish washing gloves to clean up the resulting mess.

So here we are, two weeks in.  And even though it might sound like I’m complaining, I assure you that I am not.  The hardest part of parenting so far, for me, is the occasional feeling of helplessness.  The fact that she is crying, there’s something wrong, and there is simply nothing I can do about it.

But most of the time I just dream about her.  I wonder what kind of person she will be, what her passions are going to be, what she will teach me over the years, and how on earth I am ever going to learn to say “no” to her.  Because when she falls asleep on my chest, I realize that those who told us “Your lives are going to change” had it right, but they should have followed it up with even truer words.

“And you won’t want it any other way.”

Aralyn is, quite simply, a rock star.  She is alert and awake, eyes darting everywhere, and I kid you not, she seems to recognize us already.  Not so much our voices, but she is so responsive to our touch.  It is magical and terrifying and exhilirating.

I am still trying to wrap my mind around this miracle, but I will say that time came to a standstill for about 45 minutes this afternoon.  Aralyn’s temperature was a litle low, so the nurse told me to warm her with my body heat (skin to skin contact).  I think that was the moment I utterly and completely fell in love.

Lots more to come, but for now I will leave you with her beautiful profile: